SkillShare Austin will be having a free sewing workshop at Treasure City Thrift this Friday starting at 6:00pm. All you Project Runway wannabe’s will be learning some basics.

Public Screening of Austin, Texas: East Side Blues at the Victory Grill. This is being organized by DiverseArts Culture works and starts at 7:00pm.

Domy books and Austinnewblog to host Night of the Boho Coco, a poetry reading. It starts at 8:00 and it’s FREE, so make sure you get there early.

David de Lara will die one day, but he’s ok with that. In the meantime David returns to Pump Project Art Complex with an event where an art show meets a cabaret with an exhibit of his artwork, songs by Luna Tart, burlesque by The Jigglewatts, and music by Southern Drama

If you are a total bike head, you should really show up early to get your hands on some of the parts that will be up for grabs. FrankenBike is basically just a bike swap meet… but more than that, it’s a chance to get to hang out with other bike heads. This edition of the Franken Bike will be held at the Austin Bike Zoo located on E. 17th between Leona and Salina. Get all your info at ATXBS.

We just bought our first place and the first thing that we learned was that Ikea and West Elm will always and forever own us. We are addicted to everything Apartment Therapy related and all of our money goes into buying furniture, painting, and magazine subscriptions. We are also big fans of Etsy. If you don’t know what it is, it’s an online shop where artist and designers can put up their work and art for sale to the general public. We actually found a really amazing table by Gezellig Print for sale on Etsy the other day. The best part about is that it features art inspired by East Austin. It comes in two color schemes and it goes for only $375. We asked the designer, Jennifer James Wright, why she choose East Austin as the inspiration for this table and she was nice enough to respond.

Jennifer James Wright – “I just find East Austin visually stimulating and inspiring. It all began with that little yard full of old campers (blanking on where it is right now). I stumbled across it and loved the visual, the collection. I spurred a little camper series and from there I built off of that inspiration using other beautiful things in East Austin. My physical surroundings have a big influence on my life, naturally, and I suppose that influence manifested in this form”

Inspired by Austin, Texas’s endearing East neighborhoods and the unique organic structure of succulents that are rather common in the region.

Table top is printed on both sides and will easily lift and flip. Table and screen-printing is all hand-crafted and hand-printed.

If you are an Etsy designer, and you live in East Austin, we would love to hear from you so that we can feature your products on our little blog.

We don’t own a dog, but sometimes we wish we did. We love our cats, but trying to go for a run around Town Lake… um Lady Bird Lake, would be a complete logistical fiasco with a cat on a leash. Those of you that do own dogs and are tired of having to cross I-35 are in luck. Beky, with Dog Parks for East Austin, is working on getting an off-leash area in the East Austin area. If you have a dog and you want to help Beky and her cause, sign up on either her myspace group or her google group. Read below for more information.

DogPEA (Dog Parks for East Austin) is currently working with the Austin Parks Foundation and the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department to develop and maintain off-leash areas for dogs and their people to use in East Austin.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT (or even if you do) you can join the Austin Off-Leash Dog Area Committee google group:

There are 12 legal off-leash areas in Austin, but only one of them is East of I-35. East Austin is notoriously under-served compared to the rest of the city, but the area is growing rapidly and services need to keep up with the housing development and population growth. Our dogs are family members and they need to use the parks too. East side residents shouldn’t have to drive 10 miles so their dogs can run without getting a ticket.

More neighborhood dog parks will relieve the impact on over-crowded parks like Redbud and Auditorium Shores, and help reduce cross-town traffic (with 100,000 dog-owners driving to the nice big off-leash areas).

Dog Parks are cool places to hang out and meet people – even if you don’t have a dog! Something to do in the neighborhood.

If you are a huge Project Runway fan, or even if you’re just into clothing swaps, check out the Project Runway viewing and clothing swap tonight at Cafe Mundi. It happens every Wednesday and the swap will start at 7:00pm right before the viewing party begins. Bring some clothing that you no longer need and enjoy the show.

Treasure City Thrift is hosting a huge Free Market this Sunday! What’s all the commotion you ask? Basically its like a potluck, everyone bring something and you can take whatever someone else brought that they didn’t want. Well we aren’t too sure about it yet, we haven’t been to one but we will most likely be popping in for this tomorrow. Check out their flyer for more information.

It’s no secret that we love Brooklyn’s Matt and Kim. We have followed them for the last few years and their shows have been some of the best. Recently we had a chance to see them at the Mohawk where they played to a packed and enthusiastic crowd. They have recently released a new track that you can download at RCRDLBL, along with a few words shown below.

DAMN, it’s been almost two years since Kim and I have released a single thing! In those two years our bodies have traveled… I guess… hundreds of thousands of miles?! Crazy when I think about it. Maybe that’s why our friend Jay said, “I found this footage of you playing Fuck Yeah Fest 2006, and you looked so young.” That was only two freakin years ago! So yes we put miles and years on these bodies, but with all the driving around in a 98′ green Astro van I called President VANburen, there was little room for makin NEW music. By the way writing songs is one of my favorite things to do in the world.

For the past months, every spare minute we weren’t touring we were working on a new album. We knew we needed to record somewhere we could feel creative, and for us, that wasn’t a recording studio. We did the initial tracking in the bedroom I grew up in Vermont. It still has skateboarding posters all over the ceiling, silkscreen ink from making patches on the floor, and the memories of all the punks songs I wrote and recorded there since I was 14 years old, tucked away in boxes of 4-track tapes under my bed.

All in all, I feel the songs we recorded are the best music I’ve ever worked on in that room, or anywhere else for that matter. This song is the first anyone is hearing from our upcoming album GRAND. We chose GOOD OL FASHION NIGHTMARE to kick it off, in hopes that it’ll serve you well for these last summer weeks.